🎉 I'm a CTO Now! 🎉

I haven’t written anything in like 8 years but that’s because right as I was trying to wrap up my Maxwell’s equations series in May, I interviewed for a CTO position and got it! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

The company I now work at is called Iris Works and it’s a startup affiliated with DeveloperTown Starts. Right now there’s 5 employees, including me, so it’s small as hell. And of course that also means I’m wearing 10 different hats: software engineer, devops engineer, product manager, project manager, designer, etc.

It’s a lot to handle, especially since I’ve never done it before. But the good thing is that I’ve learned more since in the last 4 months than any previous job because I’ve literally have had to figure it all out through trial and error and it’s allowed me to grow fast. It’s also an extreme mindset shift from being an individual contributor at Lessonly, especially now that I am a manager.

I was (and am still) so used to picking up a story, writing code that meets the acceptance criteria, getting it QAed and merged into master, then doing it all over again. I mean, I still do that, but even with all the other roles I have to play, it was still just me being an individual contributor. However, in August we hired a junior software engineer who is my first ever direct report. I think out of everything, learning how to be an effective manager is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

I’m gonna be honest and admit that I’m pretty terrible at it right now, but I’m reading books and articles and talking with my awesome CEO about effective management to get better at it. So here’s hoping in three months I can say that September was the worst management month I’ll have.

Also, going forward I want to try to document things that I’ve learned (I have a massive backlog of posts already) and things I’m struggling with. I’ll try not to abandon my blog for another four months again.